The electrical storage field is generally populated by technologies that store electrical energy. The renewable generator technical field is generally populated by technologies that convert a renewable resource into electrical energy.
In the electrical storage area, the energy can come from grid tied or non-grid tied sources and can be stored for very short or long periods of time. These technologies may be considered “batteries” in the sense that they are charged with some amount of energy and then discharge, at the most, the same amount of energy. Although these technologies may be considered batteries, there is a wide array of energy storage technologies that use different storage mediums including chemical, kinetic, potential, and thermal.
In the renewable energy generation field, the technologies utilize a wide variety of renewable energy sources including, wind, solar, biomass, tidal, wave, and geothermal, for example. These technologies may vary in their dispatchability, the amount of internal control they have over their electrical output, but more or less may be considered a direct renewable source to electrical energy converters. That is, they may take a set amount of energy from a renewable source and convert it to electricity at some efficiency less then 100%.
While some technologies may have the ability to store some of their energy locally and dispatch it to the grid when necessary, they may only generate electricity proportionately to their renewable resource. There may also be a general need to boost the performance of difference devices. There may be a need for technologies that overlap of these two fields.